The Supreme Court's Aereo decision didn't kill the online TV business, or even add a chilling effect. If anything, it's business-as-usual for these busy startups.

Numerous companies that spoke with Mashable each said the ruling on Aereo, in particular its relatively narrow language, will do little to slow the industry. Justice Stephen Breyer's majority decision found that Aereo's resemblance to a cable company meant that it had violated broadcasters' copyrights.

Aereo, which declined to comment for this story, continues to operate as a company but has ceased streaming broadcast television and issued refunds to customers. The decision has both vindicated some startups, which provide hardware or require users to have cable subscriptions, while opened the door for others.

One company that welcomed the comparison to a cable company is FilmOn, an Internet television startup that has been around since 2006. The company, founded by Greek billionaire Alki David, has a variety of content in its library but also operates antenna farms similar to Aereo.

FilmOn has applied to the U.S. Copyright Office for a compulsory license, which would allow the company to operate as a cable company. FilmOn previously applied, but in 2010, CBS Networks sued and a judge ruled against FilmOn, saying it was not a cable company.

David said he is now hoping the ruling on Aereo will provide some impetus for approval, adding that the retransmission fees that had been an issue with Aereo are something he would happily pay.

"We have always maintained that this is the road that should have been taken in the first place," David said. "We were continually trying to pay retransmission fees and maintained throughout the lawsuits that that's what we want. They were having none of it."

The Supreme Court's ruling that Aereo resembled a cable company does not necessarily mean that FilmOn will gain the necessary approval from the copyright office.

"FilmOn has a bit of an uphill battle in arguing that it is a 'cable system,'" said Anderson Duff, a trademark and copyright attorney for Wolf Greenfield. "FilmOn’s position is arguably contrary to congressional intent and is clearly contrary to the position of the Copyright Office as well as the Second Circuit’s 2012 opinion."

Another upstart, Simple.TV, added that the court's belief that Aereo's resemblance to a traditional cable company helped vindicate companies that offer particular services. Simple.TV provides in-home hardware for users to capture over-the-air TV signals and stream the content to connected devices.

"What the Supreme Court was really careful to do is to effectually say that the decision around Aereo was the fact that Aereo looked very much like a cable company," said Mark Ely, CEO of Simple.TV. "Clearly what Aereo did is show the world that people care about broadcast television, that there's great content there. The question is how can you get it reliably and conveniently."

There is no shortage of companies that have a similar goal to Aereo — to make it easier to stream television to connected devices — but have different systems they say fall outside the SCOTUS ruling. NimbleTV provides a service to stream television as long as users have a cable subscription.

"If the Supreme Court had made a broad-brush ruling, it would have impacted a lot of services including us. We feel relieved that they didn't do that," said Anand Subramanian, CEO of NimbleTV.

"I think from our standpoint, the Aereo ruling was very narrow and applicable to Aereo. One of the things that the court did was go as far as even saying that their decision should not impact services where the user already has an ongoing relationship with the content," Subramanian said, adding that with NimbleTV, "everybody gets paid and nobody gets harmed."

The fact that NimbleTV requires users to have paid cable subscriptions makes a difference, said Gina McCreadie, an intellectual property lawyer for Nixon Peabody.

"It's going to be a lot harder for the broadcasters to say 'you're taking our stuff for free and we're not getting anything out of it,'" she said.

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